Once tenant-farmer begs Aquino: Help me get my land

President Benigno Aquino. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

More than three months after she was awarded a parcel of land in Negros Occidental, Dorita Vargas, a 63-year-old single mother of three, said she had yet to set foot on the property that was now legally hers.

Vargas has written President Aquino, pleading that he intervene so that she and other agrarian reform beneficiaries could finally reap the benefits of owning a piece of land.

“We have not yet been able to plant on the 5 hectares because we still cannot enter the land that is under our name. We have not been formally installed by the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) because this land is in the middle of undistributed lands,” Vargas told Aquino in the May 22 letter, a copy of which was given to the Inquirer by Task Force Mapalad (TFM).

In June last year, Vargas marched with 300 other farmers belonging to TFM to Malacañang, where they were able to meet with President Aquino and some Cabinet members. At the meeting, Aquino personally promised Vargas the land she had been tilling would soon be hers.

A certificate of land ownership award (CLOA) for the 5-hectare parcels was handed over to Vargas and 12 other beneficiaries on Feb. 13 this year in a ceremony at the DAR municipal office in Negros Occidental, about eight months after Aquino made his promise.

But when Vargas and the other farmers attempted to stake their claim to the land, they were refused entry to the property by the security guards of their former landlord.

In her letter, Vargas reiterated her gratitude to Aquino for having directed the DAR to speed up the process of acquiring and awarding the land to Vargas and the others.

“While it is not yet clear when the rest of the more than 120 hectares of Hacienda Canticbil Manalo in La Castellana, Negros Occidental, will be distributed, a 5-hectare portion has been acquired and a CLOA has been awarded to 13 beneficiaries, including myself,” she said.

She said they were extremely pleased and looking forward to cultivating the land and availing themselves of financing from the Agrarian Production Credit Program.

“But unfortunately, we have not been able to benefit from this land,” she said.

“Our beloved President, what will we do with the CLOA when we are not yet installed to the land? We remain hungry and landless. Since the CLOA was awarded in February, Secretary [Virgilio] de los Reyes has taken no action to remove the stumbling blocks to our installation,” Vargas said.

She said she believed De los Reyes “does not see the importance of hastening the actual land distribution to uplift the lives of small farmers like us.”

Sought for reaction, De los Reyes said he would get to the bottom of Vargas’ problem.

Teofilo Inocencio, officer in charge of the DAR’s Office of the Assistant Secretary for Operations, said the beneficiaries could not yet be installed on the property as there was still sugar cane that needed to be harvested.

He said an agreement was reached at a recent meeting where Vargas and her fellow beneficiaries agreed to be installed by October, after the harvest. Inocencio said a representative of the landowner, Victorino Manalo, did not voice any objection to the agreement.